Due to extenuating circumstances, I don't think I can keep updating this entry. For the sake of my mental, emotional, and physical health I'm going to let it go. Lifeline, Edison, and other parts of me are going to continue monitoring and archiving the USian political situation but I, the organic core of everything, need to step back and do other things.

UPDATED: 20170604

In response to reading this tweet, I thought I'd type up the following list, and add links to some stuff I've observed. I'll update it as necessary. List beneath the cut.

1. They will come to power after a campaign based on fear, scaremongering, distorting the truth and blatant lies. Nevertheless, they will win democratically, which they will keep using as an argument everytime you defy them or question the legitimacy of their actions.Remember - gaining power through democracy does not give them permission to undermine said democracy.

"I suggest that our commander in chief ought to utilize Article I, Section 9 and take all of these individuals that are suspected, these ones on the internet spewing jihadi rhetoric…to scoop them up, charge them with treason and, under habeas corpus, detain them indefinitely at Gitmo."

"We have no idea how many people out there have pledged allegiance or are supporting ISIS, giving aid and comfort, but I would suggest hundreds of thousands, I would suggest maybe a million."

That attribution is next to impossible aside, this would legalize infowar attacks against anybody the regime considers "enemies of the state," a term that is getting thrown around more and more inside the DC Beltway.

2. They will divide and rule. Their strength lies in unity, in a single leader or party, in one voice and one ideology, and so should yours. They will call their supporters patriots, only "True Americans." You will be labeled as traitors, enemies of the state, unpatriotic, a "worse sort" of citizens, the old regime trying to regain power. You will be the corrupt "elite" while their supporters will be "the people," "the soverign" who chose them as their eladers. Don't let them divide you - remember you are one People, one Nation, with one common good.

"Press secretary Sean Spicer is cracking down on leaks coming out of the West Wing, with increased security measures that include random phone checks of White House staffers, overseen by White House attorneys."

"Upon entering Spicer’s office for what one person briefed on the gathering described as 'an emergency meeting,' staffers were told to dump their phones on a table for a 'phone check,' to prove they had nothing to hide."

"There, he explicitly warned staffers that using texting apps like Confide — an encrypted and screenshot-protected messaging app that automatically deletes texts after they are sent — and Signal, another encrypted messaging system, was a violation of the Presidential Records Act, according to multiple sources in the room."

"It's not the first time that warnings about leaks have promptly leaked. The State Department's legal office issued a four-page memo warning of the dangers of leaks, and that memo was immediately posted by The Washington Post."

The president seems to have lost interest in the nomination process after making his cabinet and Supreme Court picks, people involved in the transition say. Now, he’s trying to pass off his inattention as some kind of plan.

“In many cases, we don’t want to fill those jobs. What do all these people do? You don’t need all those jobs.” --Donald Trump

"The federal agencies are effectively run by Trump 'beachhead' teams, some 600 people who mostly are campaign donors, Trump employees, pals or allied politicos."

It is the nature of divisiveness, greed, and hatred to divide everything. Including themselves.

"Trump faced a choice; he could have Mnuchin, Cohn, Mattis, McMaster, and the grownups in the room, or he could have eminence gross Steve Bannon and his band of misfit toys. It’s not without risk of Bannon snapping, but after having his head caved in on issue after issue, Trump has decided Team Goldman and the Swamp dwellers are more to his liking."

"The losers in this fight? Trump’s base. They get nothing. No Wall. No Chinese currency manipulation declaration. No Obamacare repeal. No end to NAFTA. No trade wars. The next thing you know, Trump won’t deliver on his promises of a zillion coal miners heading down-pit on the daily."

"...asked U.S. spy agencies late last year to reveal the names of U.S. individuals or organizations contained in classified intelligence on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, engaging in the same practice that President Trump has accused the Obama administration of abusing, current and former officials said."

3. Through convoluted laws and threats they will try to slowly take over mainstream media and limit press freedom. They will ban any critical press from their briefings, calling them "liars," "fake news." They will brand those media as "unpatriotic," acting against the People (see point number two). Fight for every media outlet, every journalist that is being banned, censored, sacked, or labelled an "enemy of the state" for exposing the truth - as long as there's free press, there's hope.

O'Keefe has a long history of creative editing and forgery, so we have no way of knowing if any of these recordings are legit or not. For all we know he asked his dozen closest associates to help him make these recordings.

“Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties. We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.” Dean Baquet, executive editor of The Times

"They always bring up the First Amendment." --Donald Trump

“They let in almost every network but CNN. That’s concerning, the handpicking aspect of it.” --Noah Bierman, LA Times

“Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don’t like.” --CNN

4. They will create chaos, keep a constant sense of conflict and danger. They will use this as an argument to enact new authoritarian laws, each one further limiting your freedom. They will disguise them as being for your protection, for the good of the People. See through the chaos, the fake danger, expose it before you wake up in a totalitarian state.

"Sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States willfully violate Federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States. These jurisdictions have caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic."

"In executing faithfully the immigration laws of the United States, the Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary) shall prioritize for removal those aliens... In the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security."

Anybody who's ever dealt with ICE knows how capricious they can be.

"The Secretary, through the Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, shall, to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations, take all appropriate action to hire 10,000 additional immigration officers..."

"It is the policy of the executive branch to empower State and local law enforcement agencies across the country to perform the functions of an immigration officer in the interior of the United States to the maximum extent permitted by law."

"In furtherance of this policy, the Attorney General and the Secretary, in their discretion and to the extent consistent with law, shall ensure that jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 (sanctuary jurisdictions) are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary."

"To better inform the public regarding the public safety threats associated with sanctuary jurisdictions, the Secretary shall utilize the Declined Detainer Outcome Report or its equivalent and, on a weekly basis, make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens and any jurisdiction that ignored or otherwise failed to honor any detainers with respect to such aliens."

"Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information."

"President Trump has ordered DHS and DOJ to 'help build the legal case for its temporary travel ban on individuals from seven countries,' and that some individuals 'in the intelligence community disagree with the conclusion and are finding their work disparaged by their own department.'"

"This E.O. is being introduced without clear evidence demonstrating that visa applicants/visa holders from these seven countries pose a credible threat to our national security. This major policy change may be occurring without consideration of information that may be held under various agencies documenting terrorism-related activities or other unlawful actions by visa holders."

5. They will distort the truth, deny facts. They will make people forget what facts mean, sedate their need to find the truth. They will feed "post-truths" and "post-facts", replace knowledge with emotions. Always fact-check and point out the truth, fight emotion with facts.

"A fake does not have the primary function, but is intended to deceive you into thinking that it does have that function, and hence to serve the secondary function. A fake gun won't shoot, but if you are deceived into thinking it is real, it can intimidate you." --George Lakoff, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley

"One of President Trump’s most consistent rhetorical maneuvers is a fairly basic but often highly effective one—the diversionary reverse accusation. When he is accused of benefitting from 'fake news,' he flips the neologism on its head; suddenly CNN, the Times, and the rest are 'fake news.'"

6. They will create and leak fake, superficial scandals. They will smear opposition with trivial accusations, blowing them out of proportion and then feeding the flame. This will be the smokescreen for the legal steps they take towards totalitarianism. See through the superficial topics in mainstream media (see point number three) and focus on what they are actually doing.

This seems to be distracting people from the fact that he's firing administrators left and right with no signs of hiring replacements for them.

The risk to life and limb of millions of US citizens becomes apparent only when you consider that the NOAA's mission, in part, is predicting storms and developing strategies for mitigating damage from same.

"He [Rick Spinrad, former chief scientist, NOAA] said that weather warnings for tornadoes and hurricanes could be compromised and that navigational capacity used to help guide commercial ships and other mariners would suffer, leaving them without the 'improved forecasts they need to safely maneuver coastal waters.' It could become harder to warn of tsunamis and forecast weather that will cause power outages."

7. They will propose new, "scandalous" laws to provoke your outrage. You will focus your efforts on fighting them, and they will back off to give you a false sense of victory. In the meantime they will push through less "flashy" legislation slowly dismantling democracy (see point number four). Focus your fight on what really matters.

I'm not saying this isn't a real problem or a real bill. I'm saying that this is getting a lot of press at the same time the FBI is going public with high-ups in the Trump regime getting caught while under surveillance talking under the table with Russia. These bills are being introduced at a time opportune to distract people from serious breaches of US national security.

8. They will try to take control of the judiciary. They will assault your highest court. This way they can remove the checks and balances system, be able to enact unconstitutional laws, and threaten anyone that defies them with prosecution, including the press (see point number three). Fight for the independence of the courts, they are the safeguard of the rule of law and the democratic system.

In case it's not clear, Price was caught making hundreds of thousands of US dollars of stock trades on companies that he was manipulating legislation pertaining to industries those very companies are active in.

"I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power."

Sessions was referring to Hawaii, the 50th state of the USA, made official on 21 August 1959.

9. They will try to limit freedom of assembly, calling it a necessity for your security. They will enact laws prioritizing state events and rallies, or those of a certain type of ideology. This will let them choose who can demonstrate legally and give them a legal basis to forcefully disperse or prosecute the rest. Oppose any legislation trying to change freedom of assembly for any reason.

I don't think I need to describe in detail the chilling effect this brings to people who organize or attend protests. This gives LEOs additional impetus to kettle and arrest protestors, which means that the more people they arrest, the more people's jobs are in danger, and the less motivation there is to speak out.

This means any kind of arrest, not just protests. Imagine getting SWATted and arrested, and even though you did nothing the arrest still shows up in Rap Back and on your boss' desk the next day. Ideal for damaging people's lives.

"Significantly, the statute also implicates any organization 'found to be a conspirator' with the trespasser, threatening any collaborator groups witha fine 'ten times' that imposed on the intruder..."

The article leads off with a picture of a black bloc, when the actual text is about people who attended the protest but were not part of the action. Dirty pool, Al Jazerra.

10. They will distort the language, coin new terms, labels, repeat the same phrases until you subconsciously associate them the way they want. A "thief," "liar," or "traitor" will automatically mean the opposition; a "patriot" will mean their follower (see point number two). Their slogans will have double meaning, giving strength to their supporters and causing disgust or fear in their opponents. Fight changes in language in the public sphere, remind the true meaning of words, guard them for the people.

"No law forbids a president from making a criminal referral to the Justice Department, but it is unusual for a president to direct the agency to open a criminal investigation into his perceived opponents or to talk publicly about having done so."

“The fear is that these leak investigations will be used as a form of political retaliation” against people who may have exposed information that is personally embarrassing to Mr. Trump, she said. “We don’t want this to become a political witch hunt.” --Susan Hennessy of the Brookings Institution

That took longer than expected. The new regieme must be fighting the FBI investigations pretty hard to let it take this long.

If you're going to monkeywrench a pipeline, you don't go after a specifically empty and unused section of pipeline, you shut down the pipeline. This does not match up with any of the known environmental activism groups' MO's at all.

11. They will take over your national symbols, associate them with themselves, make them into attributes of their power. Your flag, your anthem, and your symbols belong to the People, to everyone equally. Don't let them be hijacked. Use and expose them in your fight as much as they do. Wear your national symbols with pride, let them give you strength, not associate you with shame brought by them.

If you co-opt other holidays, people forget to celebrate them, and even forget what they mean. Useful, that.

Granted, however, this does go back to the days of the Red Scare (local mirror), which was a time of natinoalistic fervor as well as xenophobia. It's a strategy that seems to be applied whenever the current regeime is afraid that the people will look anywhere but the US government for direction, inspiration, or new ideas. Remember that writers and artists were just as mistrusted as non-USians.

12. They will try to rewrite history to suit their needs and use education to support their agenda. They will smear any historical or living figure who wouldn't approve of their actions, or distort their image to make you think they would. They will place emphasis on historical education in schools, feeding young minds with the only "correct" version of history and world view. They will raise a new generation of voters on their ideology, backing it with a distorted interpretation of history and view of the world. Guard the education of your children, teach them critical thinking, ensure their open-mindedness, and protect your true history and heritage.

"Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln and many of our greatest presidents fought with the media and called them out oftentimes on their lies." --Donald Trump

"In fact, while Jefferson often lambasted the press, he also believed it was fundamental to democracy, famously writing in 1823 to the Marquis de Lafayette, ''The only security of all is in a free press.''"

13. They will alienate foreign allies and partners, convincing you don't need them. They won't care for the rest of the world, with their focus on "making your country great again." They will omit the fact that you're part of a bigger world, and the world's development depends on cooperation, on sharing and on trade. Don't let them build walls for your "security" instead of bridges for your prosperity.

Why is it always "former?" If you're still working for them and you say stuff like this, you get fired and lose your pension. That screws not only you but the family that depends on you. It's easy to talk a good game and say what you think you would do until you're in the hotseat.

It makes perfect sense if you're a xenophobe who wants to keep foreigners out of your contry: You make it so much of a pain in the ass to get anything done while you're on travel that you don't do business in the US. You inconvenience tourists so much that they won't come to your country. You make techies mistrust you so much that, when faced with a choice between not being able to carry your kit with you and just not coming to that country, you don't bother coming to that country.

Yes, it's a total footbullet, but common sense isn't anywhere to be found here.

Either the purge is starting to go out of control, Bannon wants a position where he has less attention paid to him ("President Bannon"), or he's finally crossed the wrong people in the Oval Office. Hard to tell.